


you're the darkness in me

by venndaai



Category: Years & Years - Palo Santo (Music Video)
Genre: Dubious Consent, Other, Robot/Human Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-02
Updated: 2018-11-02
Packaged: 2019-08-14 15:00:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 987
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16494890
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/venndaai/pseuds/venndaai
Summary: The routine of Olly's life in Palo Santo.





	you're the darkness in me

**Author's Note:**

  * For [flowerdeluce](https://archiveofourown.org/users/flowerdeluce/gifts).



> I hope you don't mind a late gift! I didn't see your letter until after the deadline but it introduced me to Palo Santo and now I'm in love, and wanted to write you something to thank you for that :)

“Can you dance?” the machine asked, and Olly had smiled, knowing then that for the first time in his life, he had power. He could go with this man-shaped thing to the city of light and splendor and he could dance as much as they wanted. Easy. 

He didn’t anticipate the repetition. It’s strangely exhausting. But he’s not overworked. The audience is insatiable, they always want another performance, but the showman doesn’t let them have Olly 24/7. The showman’s very careful about it, announcing the final performance of the day even when Olly wants to keep going, when the fever in Olly’s blood screams at him to stay in the moment, under the lights. Olly tried to argue once and the showman just put a hand on his shoulder, as always a gentle yet awkward touch, lacking human grace. The collar was in the showman’s other hand. Olly stood still, and as it snapped around his neck he felt the fever drain away, and he swayed a little, steadied by cold hands on his shoulders. 

Every evening the collar snaps on and they walk back to the highrise apartment, him and his keeper, through the glittering lights and buzzing signs of the city. Olly keeps his head high, his steps deliberate. Part of him expects the showman to tell him to relax, but the words never come. The walk is always silent. There are Palo Santo citizens on the streets, and occasionally humans too, and their eyes are hard and cold and bright. Olly doesn’t shiver, but he slows his walk, just a fraction, so the showman draws closer. Neither of them acknowledges this. 

The repetition is exhausting. Often when Olly reaches the dark, empty apartment, after the collar has been removed again, he tries a different dance, bare feet on cold linoleum, just for the sake of doing something different, feeling something new. The showman doesn’t stop him, just stands in the shadows and watches. Enjoying the free show, maybe. The extra hit of- whatever they get out of human performances. But it never lasts long. Olly’s too tired. He collapses on the enormous bed.  

“Take your clothes off,” the showman says, every night.

Olly still doesn’t understand why. This is perhaps the thing that makes him despair the most of ever feeling safe here. He can’t be safe until he understands, and maybe the creatures of Palo Santo are just too alien. With a human, he’d understand. But the showman isn’t asking for sexual gratification. Olly is the one who initiated that, on the… third night, if he remembers right, when the strain of lying there exposed while the android prodded him in that jerky, inhuman way, or just stared, face so inscrutable in the low light, became too much to bear. Olly was the one who pressed their bodies together, because the touch and heat and stretch was something he could understand, even if the android’s skin was too cold and the android’s motions were too stiff, even if the sex never had that frantic fluid quality that came from two human beings fighting back the dark together. 

The showman always goes along with it, and is never rough, at least, even if there’s no genuine gentleness either, just hollow imitations of the erotic dance moves Olly performs on stage. 

Olly is always the only one who is naked. 

Afterwards, they lie on the bed, Olly curled to one side, the android at his back. He wants to roll over, drape himself over the older man’s body and maybe cry, or laugh, just indulge in any kind of emotion. If there was a human man in bed with him he would.

He remembers the android’s voice, changing from the low rough rumble to something high, feminine and alien.  _ Those things are all the same to me. _ He thinks of a human boy, curling hair and thick glasses and a shy smile, a girl leaning on him and laughing. The fake closeness of the dance, the separation behind the stage.

In the ruins Olly wanted Palo Santo, longed for it, for its lights and glitter, and for the freedom it seemed to hold.  _ The place where gender and sexuality have no rules. _ Olly’s android audience watches his shows with such hunger in their alien faces, but they’ll never in a million years understand what the songs mean. The thing at Olly’s back doesn’t know what it is to be a man, or what it is to love one, but it wants to. 

Olly rolls over. The android is staring at him, like always. The constant attention, that’s what he wanted, isn’t it? 

“Olly,” the showman says, in the same way he says Olly’s name every night at the dance hall,  _ the divine, the amazing and incredible Olly Alexander, _ strangely hushed, almost reverent, nearly human. Olly feels his mouth bend into a smile. 

The android’s arm bends, mechanically slow, and his strong fingers brush Olly’s hair. Olly can’t stop the full body shudder. 

He doesn’t want this. He wants a human boy, who can dance and sing and laugh, with warm skin and a collar on his neck. The androids are just a means to an end, providers of food and shelter and spotlights and microphones. 

But there’s something about their endless, insatiable hunger. Their craving for  _ him _ . For what he can provide. His pleasure and pain, joy and fear. They’ll never get tired of him. He’ll always be wanted. 

And if the collar’s on his neck for good, shouldn’t he try to enjoy it?

“Tell me again that I’m perfect,” he whispers, and touches the showman’s face. Not the mouth, he remembers. The showman doesn’t like it when he touches his mouth.

He imagines there’s tenderness in the showman’s black eyes, in his hoarse voice, when he says, slowly, with utter sincerity, “You are perfect.” He means it, Olly knows. He means it forever.


End file.
